Jogging Kills Your Power – Studies You Should Know About

Baseball is a game of POWER, power pitchers and power hitters dominate the game and get the attention of coaches, scouts and fans. Every play in baseball lasts only a few seconds and the two main actions, swing and throwing, requires less than a second. Despite these facts endurance training has been emphasised for years which is especially true for pitchers who have been made to run countless about of poles.

The big question is why would you do endurance training if your sport requires nothing but short bursts of power?

Warning – running on the warning track for too long will

Kill your Power Output!!!!

Enter today’s study that you should know about:

NONCOMPATIBILITY OF POWER AND ENDURANCE TRAINING AMONG COLLEGE BASEBALL PLAYERS

They wanted to find how lower body power in baseball player was affected throughout a season with either endurance or sprint based metabolic/conditioning work.

Lower body power is a great thing to have in baseball and pretty much any other sport in the world. In another study the Texas Rangers organization tested all of their players from “A” ball all the way up to the Big Leaguers and showed that lower body power levels climbed higher and higher with each level of competition. To find out other differences between the minor league and the big league players check out the rest of the article here.

They split 16 college baseball players into two groups. While both groups performed the exact same in-season weight training program 2-3 days per week they differed in how they performed their conditioning. One group performed sprints (10-30 reps, 15-60 meters, 10-60 sec rest) while the other group performed approximately 45 minutes of jogging or cycle 3 days per week.

Lower body power was measured before and after the season. To measure lower body power these authors used a TENDO FiTROdyne Powerlizer. This device measures jump height but also takes into consideration body weight.

Body weight is an important component of power because if two guys can both jump 24 inches off the ground the guy who weighs more needs to produce more power to get 24 inches off the ground.

At 307lbs with a 35 1/2 inch vertical Ndamukong Suh of the Detroit Lions is a very powerful athlete

Why Use the Vertical Jump?

The vertical jump is standard test for lower body power in the world of exercise physiology. While a baseball player’s ability to jump vertically is not stressed it does still indicate a level of athleticism and power. The study that I performed found that vertical jump height does not significantly correlate with throwing velocity but I would say it doesn’t hurt to have a guy that can jump high. If nothing else it indicates a good strength to weight ratio.

If you want to measure your own power get a calculator and find out how high your vertical jump is in centimeters (your vertical in inches/2.54) and how heavy you are in kilograms (your weight in pounds X 2.2) and follow the equations below for your peak and average power in watts with the Harman Formula.

If you want to compare yourself to the pro ball players in this other study that I mentioned here are their numbers. The big league players in the Rangers organization had average verticals of nearly 72 cm and weighed 101.2 kg which gave them a peak power of 11542 watts. Compare this to the “A” ball players who were 92kg with verticals of 70 cm which produced peak power of 10823 watts.

For the record Ndamukong Suh’s peak power is 12427 watts!!! Someone who weighs 100kg (220lbs) would need to jump a freaky 45 inches to produce as much power.

What did they find out?

From the beginning to the end of the season the group that performed endurance training saw their power levels drop an average of 39.5 watts. This isn’t a huge drop and it is understandable how at the end of the season your body might not be what is was at the start of the season. However the sprint group saw an average increase of 210.6 watts!!!

The results really come down to a principle in exercise physiology called specificity. This principal states that the training program needs to be sport specific. Obviously the most specific thing to throwing or hitting a baseball would be throwing or hitting a baseball but our bodies can only handle so much of these actions so we need to find a means of conditioning that DOES NOT hurt our ability to produce power.

What this means

Whenever you exercise you are training your body to get better at that particular action. So if you run long distances your body is going to make the adaptations necessary to get better at this type of training by improving your ability to use the slow twitch muscles rather than the fast twitch muscles.

Slow twitch muscles are made for endurance and as a result they have very poor power production while fast twitch muscles are great for short powerful bursts but bad for endurance. Although baseball games can last a long time there is approximately 13 seconds between pitches which is more than enough time for those fast twitch muscles to recover.

Check out the picture below of an endurance runner versus a sprinter. Which body would you say is better for throwing hard?

I’m going with the guy on the right

Take Home Message

Running is great for baseball players but the type of running you do is going to have a huge effect on how your body is going to respond.

Instead of conditioning with long distance running try:

running sprints like they did in this study

perform circuits of exercises likes lunges, pushups and rows

push a sled or a car (be sure its in neutral and a safe environment)

try interval poles where you alternate between jogging, sprinting and walking